Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

Or as Grace might say, “Blah blah blah.”

I wasn’t much help when I told Cynthia almost every kid went through a period like this. Even if Grace did make mistakes, it didn’t follow that the consequences would have to be as grave as what Cynthia had endured. Grace, God help us, was a teenager. In another six years, if Cyn and I hadn’t killed ourselves by then, we’d see Grace mature into a sensible young woman.

But it was hard to believe that day would ever come.

Like that night when Grace was thirteen and hanging out at the Post Mall with her friends at the same time Cynthia happened to be there looking for shoes. Cynthia spotted our girl outside of Macy’s sharing a cigarette. Cynthia confronted her in full view of her classmates and ordered her to the car. Cynthia was so rattled and busy tearing a strip off Grace that she ran a stop sign.

Nearly got broadsided by a dump truck.

“We could have been killed,” Cynthia told me. “I was out of control, Terry. I totally lost it.”

It was after that incident that she decided, for the first time, to take a break from us. Just a week. For our sake — or more specifically, for Grace’s — as much as her own. A time-out, Cynthia called it. She bounced the idea off Naomi Kinzler, the therapist Cynthia had been seeing for years, and she saw the merit in it.

“Remove yourself from the conflict situation,” Kinzler said. “You’re not running away; you’re not abandoning your responsibilities. But you’re going to take some time to reflect, to regroup. You can give yourself permission to do that. This gives Grace time to think, too. She may not like what you’re doing, but she might come to understand it. You suffered a terrible wound when you lost your family, and it’s a wound that will never completely heal. Even if your daughter can’t appreciate that now, I believe someday she will.”

Cynthia got a place at the Hilton Garden Inn, over behind the mall. She was going to stay at the budget-minded Just Inn Time to save money, but I said no way. Not only was it a dump, but there’d been a white-slave operation running out of it a few years back.

She was only gone a week, but it felt like a year. What surprised me was how much Grace missed her mother.

“She doesn’t love us anymore,” Grace said one night over microwaved lasagna.

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Okay, she doesn’t love me anymore.”

“The reason your mother’s taking a break is because she loves you so much. She knows she went too far, that she overreacted, and she needs some time to get her head together.”

“Tell her to speed it up.”

When Cynthia returned, things were better for a month, maybe even six weeks. But the peace treaty started to crumble. Minor incursions at first, maybe a shot across the bow.

Then all-out warfare.

When they had one of their battles, feelings would be hurt and it’d take several days for our normal life — whatever that was — to resume. I’d attempt mediation, but these things had to run their course. Cynthia would communicate anything important she had to tell Grace through notes, signed L. Mom , just the way her own mother used to do when she was pissed with her daughter and couldn’t bring herself to write Love .

But eventually the notes would be signed Love, Mom , and a thaw in relations would begin. Grace would find some pretext to ask her mother for guidance. Does this top work with these pants? Can you help with this homework assignment? A tentative dialogue would be opened.

Things would be good.

And then they’d be bad.

The other day, they were really bad.

Grace wanted to go with two of her girlfriends to New Haven to a huge used-clothing bazaar that was running midweek. They could only go at night, because they had school through the day. Like that concert in New York, it would mean a late return home on the train. I offered to drive them up, kill some time, and then bring them back, but Grace would have none of it. She and her friends weren’t five. They wanted to do this on their own.

“There’s no way,” Cynthia said, standing at the stove making dinner. Breaded pork cutlets and wild rice, as I remember. “Terry, tell me you’re with me on this. There’s no way she’s doing that.”

Before I could weigh in, Grace said, “Are you kidding? I’m not going to fucking Budapest. It’s New Haven.”

This was a relatively new wrinkle. The use of foul language. I don’t suppose we had anyone to blame but ourselves. It was not uncommon for Cynthia or me to drop the f-bomb when we were angry or frustrated. If we had one of those swear jars where you drop in a quarter every time you used a bad word, we could have used the money to take a trip to Rome every year.

Just the same, I called Grace on it.

“Don’t you ever speak to your mother that way,” I said sternly.

Cynthia clearly felt a reprimand was inadequate. “You’re grounded for two weeks,” she said.

Grace, stunned, came back with: “How long are you going to take it out on me that you couldn’t save your family? I wasn’t even born, okay? It’s not my fault.”

A verbal knife to the heart with that one.

I could see, in Grace’s face, instant regret, and something more than that. Fear. She’d crossed a line, and she knew it. Maybe, if she’d had a chance, she’d have withdrawn the comment, offered an apology, but Cynthia’s hand came up so quickly, she never had a chance.

She slapped our daughter across the face. A smack loud enough I felt it in my own cheek.

“Cyn!” I shouted.

But as I yelled, Grace stumbled to the side, put out her hand instinctively to brace her fall in case she lost her footing.

Her hand hit the side of the pot that was cooking the rice. Knocked it to one side. Grace’s hand dropped, landed on the burner.

The scream. Jesus, the scream.

“Oh God!” Cynthia said. “Oh my God!”

She grabbed Grace’s arm, spun her around to the sink, and turned on the cold tap, kept a constant stream of water running over her burned hand. The back of it had hit the hot pan and the side had connected with the burner. Maybe a millisecond of contact in each case, but enough to sear the flesh.

Tears were streaming down Grace’s face. I wrapped my arms tightly around her while Cynthia kept running cold water on her hand.

We took her to Milford Hospital.

“You can tell them the truth,” Cynthia told Grace. “You can tell them what I did. I deserve to be punished. If they call the police, they call the police. I’m not going to make you tell them something that isn’t true.”

Grace told the doctor she was boiling water to cook some macaroni, iPod buds in her ears, listening to Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” dancing like an idiot, when she flung her arm out and hit the handle on the pot, knocking it off the stove.

We brought Grace home, her hand well bandaged.

The next day, Cynthia moved out for the second time.

She hasn’t come back yet.

“Reggie, Reggie, come in, come in.”

“Hi, Unk.”

“Did you find her?”

“Jeez, let me get my coat off.”

“I’m sorry. I just—”

“I didn’t. I didn’t find... her. Not yet. No money, either.”

“But I thought — You said you found the house and—”

“It didn’t work out. It was a false lead. Eli lied to us, Unk. And it’s not like we can go back and ask him again.”

“Oh. But you said—”

“I know what I said. I’m telling you, we struck out.”

“I’m sorry. I guess I got my hopes up. You seemed so sure last time I talked to you. I’m just disappointed is all. There’s coffee there if you want it.”